


The Lost Niece

by myrskytuuli



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Della Duck went full villain, Gen, Nothing is okay, dark!AU, duckfeels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 15:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14335122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrskytuuli/pseuds/myrskytuuli
Summary: Della gets compared to her uncle a lot. She is smarter than the smarties and tougher than the toughies, brave and clever, with lust for adventure, for adrenaline, for making herself into something more.





	The Lost Niece

When Bentina Beakley is called in to identify the bodies, she doesn’t believe it. When a young agent, (and since when did they become so young, no one had been this young when she had been working here) escorts her through the grey hallways of SHUSH, she still doesn’t believe it.

When she is standing next to agents Mr. and Mrs. Vanderquak’s cold bodies, she does believe.

The sheets have been pulled back to reveal only their faces, probably to spare Beakley, but she does not want to be spared. She pulls down the sheet until she can see all of her daughter.

“It was…unimaginable. They were always the best that we had. We always believed that there would be no mission that they would not come up on top. They almost made it too. Fought till the very end.”

They would have. Beakley had trained her daughter herself, she knew exactly how capable she was. And with an egg waiting for its parents to return home, they would have fought to the very last desperate breath.

It had not been enough.

The abdomen that had carried Beakley’s granddaughter was now shredded and brutalised, testament to the spear that had been stabbed through it.

 

Della and Donald Duck lose their parents when they are still too young to remember it. Both still covered in their downy yellow baby-feathers, they are taken in by Grandma Duck. Then few years later, they are taken in by their uncle Scrooge, the richest, most exciting uncle in the world.

Della gets compared to her uncle a lot. She is smarter than the smarties and tougher than the toughies, brave and clever, with lust for adventure, for adrenaline, for making herself into something more.  

Donald is just there. In the background. Being less.

They hear many times how they are the most privileged kids in the world. They have an uncle who loves them all-consumingly, unconditionally; They have the safety net of the largest financial empire in the world holding them afloat, and their days are filled with adventures in exotic locations.

When they are pre-teens, they have already visited every continent on the planet. When they are teenagers, they find the ancient artefacts of their home mundane. When they start college, they have met with the fae, with ghosts, with minor deities, and already grown used to all of them.

When they start their studies at college, uncle Scrooge tells them to be ambitious.

 

Donald raises his nephews without ever mentioning their uncle Scrooge or talking about their mother.

Sometimes Dewey will put himself and others into danger in his quest for glory and adrenaline. Sometimes Louie will ignore laws and rules in favour of indulging himself. Sometimes Huey will have neurotic breakdowns in his never-ending quest to be perfect.

Donald already knows a way of parenting that will lead to a catastrophe, but he doesn’t know a way of parenting that would save him and the boys from a catastrophe.

It keeps him up at nights.

 

 

They argue about the spear a lot. They had found it, they had risked their lives to find it, and now uncle Scrooge wanted to just walk away, to leave the spear where it is.

“I passed the tests, the spear CHOSE me! For thousand years it has been waiting here, for someone who is worthy to come and claim it, for someone that the spear will accept as its new master. And it did! I am the master of the Spear of Selene! I can’t just leave it to be buried under the earth, to disappear forever!”

“It’s too dangerous! If we take it with us as a memento, we also risk it falling into wrong hands. It is not worth the risk.”

“A memento? It is a magical artefact of unimaginable power and it chose me. It won’t fall into wrong hands because I wasn’t planning on shoving it into a display case and letting it gather dust.”  

“Absolutely not! This is not an argument! You will not go back for that thing!”

 

Uncle Scrooge is always willing and ready to share stories of his youth with the twins. Some nights, as uncle Scrooge is stuck in his office late, the twins will show up at the bin and drag him from his paperwork with the power of their pleading eyes. They will end lounging on top of the money, the old wooden chest with its scrapbooks dragged up and opened.

Donald listens to the stories behind the stories. To hear uncle Scrooge tell it, it would sound that his adventures growing up were much like their own, with excitement and daring deeds aplenty, but Donald knows early on that uncle Scrooge is telling them the cleaned up stories. In the old family portrait, he sees uncle Scrooge as malnourished duckling with sickly looking plumage. Della loves his rags to riches story. Donald thinks that children in rags just look sad, even when they are uncle Scrooge.  

Uncle Scrooge likes to tell them stories of Klondike, a place where only the strong survived, where one person could become a legend if they were tough enough, and where the law meant nothing. Donald thinks that Klondike sounded like a miserable place to freeze your tail off. Della bemoans loudly that she will never get to experience anything like the famed gold rush.

 

One of the professors from the twins’ college approaches Scrooge after the Duck twins have spent year with very different approaches to their academic life. While Donald’s grades are perfectly average, Della is pushing through her studies like her tail is on fire. But even her worrisomely high self-standards aren’t the reason that the professor has felt it necessary to have this chat with Mr. McDuck himself.

“I do feel that your ward…doesn’t feel challenged enough. She is extraordinary bright young woman, with very high expectations of herself, but in all honesty, this is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

The man hands Scrooge an essay, twice as long as necessary, and with thoroughly researched financial model presented in it. It is a perfect explanation on how the McDuck industries could use its financial power to completely destroy and then rebuild the world economy.

“Well. It is just a thought experiment.” Scrooge concludes.

 

Donald wakes up to his sister shaking him. His first instinct is to start yelling, because how dare she! First disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving her eggs behind and driving uncle Scrooge up the walls with worry. Now, she has a wild look in her face and in her hands she is gripping something that she should not be gripping.

The spear of Selene.

“Della what-“

“Shh! Don, come quick. We have to leave. We’ll take the eggs and leave.”

“What in the world are you-“

Donald listens with ice forming in his gut as his sister rambles something incoherent. About a new chapter in history, and how she has finally found her destiny, and how it is all going to be all-right. He refuses to go with his sister, to whatever mad venture she is planning, and he won’t let Della take her eggs with her either.

For his eternal regret, Donald also lets her walk away. (And Scrooge will later remember that too. He will believe that if Donald had just said something, anything, about his sister’s new obsession they could have intervened.)

 

In a secluded private island there is a fortress where SHUSH keeps individuals described as “supervillains”. Code name of the fortress: Dark Side of the Moon. One of the world’s best kept secrets now inhabits a cell at the bottom level. It is very few individuals even inside SHUSH itself that know who is being kept at the most secure level.

Beyond SHUSH, there is one person who knows that she is there.

“Hello there, uncle.”

Scrooge McDuck looks small under the bright fluorescent lights and seen through the thick glass wall of her cell. 

“Your boys moved in to live at the mansion.”

Della’s face goes through a flicker of surprise. “Have they now? And Donald?”

“Him too. I have pictures for you.” The older duck takes the photographs from his pocket and presses them against the glass, so Della can peer close to examine the faces of her sons.

It keeps her occupied for a while, her eyes drinking in the pictures.

“So, they keeping you on your toes? Are they as bad rascals as we were?” Her tone is light and teasing, as they were talking about this over some nice brunch.

“Donald has raised them very well. They are good lads.”

Something sly appears in Della’s expression and Scrooge already knows that he will hate what she is going to say next. This is how these visits always go.

“Come now, you must be at least little bit proud of me. You must have always known that if there ever was someone who would almost succeed in taking over the world, it would be a McDuck.”

 “But you didn’t.”

“Because I spared you. I could have killed you and now be the queen of the world. But I didn’t, because family sticks together, isn’t that right uncle? But I could have, I was the one who was capable of it.”

“You’re disgracing the family name.”

Della hisses like even her goose-cousin never could, a sound so intimidating that even Scrooge takes a step back from the glass wall separating them.

“And WHAT was I supposed to DO! You told me to be ambitious! You filled my head with stories and left me nothing to accomplish! Where could I go that you hadn’t already been! What could I do that you hadn’t already done! WHERE can you climb, when you’re already on TOP?! HOW was I supposed to prove that I am just as smart, just as tough, just as GOOD as YOU! You climbed from the bottom of the world to the top with your guts and skills and cleverness! Whatever I did, they would say that I only did it because I had you there helping me. Your money. Your support. Your influence. WHAT was I supposed to DO!!”

She slams her hands against the glass, the whole room echoing with the slam, and as the echo dies down so seems to simmer her rage. She slides to kneel against the glass, looking up at her uncle with pleading eyes that she had once used to drag him from his work to play with them.

“Uncle Scrooge, please let me out.”

“You killed so many people Della. The doctors say that your psychosis-“

“Please. I’m lonely in here.”

“I’m sorry. I am. For everything.”

The tears that had been swimming in Della’s eyes dried out as quick as they had appeared

“Maybe next time my definition of the family I am willing to spare will be smaller.”

“Goodbye Della. I will bring more pictures next time.”


End file.
